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Your bed can actually be the place to lose weight! Yes you read it right. You can shed the kilos in the bedroom. Don’t get too excited, we’re talking about sleeping your way to go lean. According to a recent study revealed in the New York Times bestseller Zero Belly Diet, sub-par sleep can actually undermine weight loss by as much as 55 percent. What you need is a healthy lifestyle and some tweaks your night time routine to shed some real weight.

1. Sleep in a dark room

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It is advisable to sleep in a dark room for a sound sleep. If your bedroom is exposed to outdoor lights then consider blackout curtains or blinds for your room. Turn off all the glowing clocks and turn off your TV. When you are in complete darkness your body produces the hormone melatonin, which not only makes you feel sleepy but can even help you in the production of calorie-burning fat, according to a study published in the Journal of Pineal Research.

2. Hide all your gadgets

According to the Manchester University research the short-wavelength blue light emitted from the smartphones and tablets can interrupt the body’s production of melatonin which can actually disturb your metabolism. So from now switch off all your gadgets before you go to bed!

3. Give yourself a bedtime

Even if you don’t go to sleep on time, it’s important for you to tell yourself that you’re “staying up past your bedtime.” This might just help you go to bed early. Most adults should get 7-8 hours of sleep at night, do the math and be a little watchful towards your sleep pattern.

4. Schedule tea time

Certain teas can swiftly put you to sleep and also have magical weight-loss properties, from reducing hunger pangs to upping your calorie burn. Some of the best teas to have before sleep are chamomile, lavender and valerian. These teas actually have some sedative properties.

5. If you eat at night keep portions small

It is advisable to keep your last meal light and not stuff yourself with a lot of food. When you eat a large meal before bed, your body has to work really hard to digest it long into the night — and if your body is still worked up, so are you.

6. Eat mint or simply put the fragrance on

Mint has the ability to suppress your salivary glands and your hunger pangs. Try burning a minty candle or fragrance to put yourself to sleep without feeling hungry.

7. Lock your kitchen or yourself

Try locking up the kitchen around 8 PM or simply stay away from it. Closing the kitchen early might help you lose weight and not binge at odd hours.

8. Take a hot shower

After a long day at work and post your early dinner try taking a hot shower for a good night’s sleep. A hot shower can help you relive stress, relax the sore muscles and immediately put you to sleep.

9. Gymming late is not a very good idea

Hitting the gym too late can actually mess with your body clock. Exercising late in the evening can energise your body so much that it may not be able to wind down in time for your body to relax and sleep.

10. Avoid eating chocolate at night

Chocolates contain caffeine which may prevent your body from going off to sleep when you want it if you are sensitive to the compound. It is advisable to eat the chocolate during the day time so that you can burn those extra calories as well throughout the day.

Like this:

In the bleak midwinter, here’s a warming thought: All that shivering might be getting you in shape.

According to a new study, 15 minutes in the cold can be the metabolic equivalent of an hour of exercise. Both have an impact on our two main types of adipose tissue, aka fat.

White fat—the blobby kind that bulges hips, thighs, and bellies—stores energy. Brown fat—prevalent in infants but less abundant in adults—generates heat and burns calories when stimulated.

Last year scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health monitored ten healthy adult subjects—a mix of men and women—as they exercised in a 65°F (18°C) lab. Later the same subjects lay on a bed as the temperature fell to a shiver-inducing 53°F (12°C).

In both tests the subjects’ muscles contracted, producing a hormone called irisin that boosts body heat and creates brown fat cells (which get their color from their high iron content) out of white ones.

The study, published this week in the journal Cell Metabolism, is the latest look at brown fat and its benefits. Until just a few years ago, it was thought that humans lose their brown fat in early infancy. Since alandmark 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, however, we’ve known that many—perhaps all—adults have stores of it, though in varying amounts.

Two years ago a group of scientists were studying exercise in mice, and they made the seminal discovery that skeletal muscle produces a hormone called irisin, which can stimulate the activity and mass of brown fat.

But we were puzzled: It doesn’t make much sense that something that produces heat, like skeletal muscle, would generate a hormone that drives the increase in energy expenditure from another [thing like] brown fat.

So we thought outside the box and considered another form of muscle activity: shivering. Shivering is prompted by cold—it’s [an ancient biological] survival mechanism [that helps us] maintain our core temperature. That’s vitally important in preventing hypothermia.

So we realized that shivering, rather than exercise, could be the primary driver of irisin secretion. And we set up a series of clinical experiments to demonstrate that.

Some adults have more brown fat—and lower glucose—than others. Why is that?

That’s a great question. First of all, we still don’t know if every adult has brown fat. We just know that leaner individuals tend to have a greater amount of it [than heavier people]. But we don’t know if [it’s genetic or for some other reason].

Nor do we know what the effects are of chronically stimulating brown fat in adults. And that’s critical. We need to learn what all the metabolic consequences are of brown-fat activation.

[Our assumption], though, is that it would lead to an improvement of metabolism—and possibly to weight loss or maintaining weight loss.

Shivering is just one of our responses to cold, right?

[Humans have] three mechanisms to defend against cold. One is called vasoconstriction: Blood flow to the skin decreases, which increases the body’s ability to maintain temperature in the core [and protect vital organs].

The second one is called nonshivering thermogenesis. It’s probably related to brown fat, [and basically means] all of the chemical reactions that get activated during cold but don’t result in muscle contraction. Brown fat is the most efficient means of generating heat—an analogy would be a [super-efficient] furnace.

The third one is shivering, and it’s basically a last resort—unpleasant and highly inefficient. But it does contract the muscle fibers, which can produce enough heat to maintain your core temperature.

Irisin is at the center of this. What is it, exactly, and how does it work?

Irisin is [a hormone] produced by muscle contractions, either by exercise or shivering. Once it’s produced, it moves through the blood and turns white fat cells into brown ones.

Does this mean that exercise is, metabolically speaking, just another form of shivering? And that if I go and exercise in the cold, I’ll burn twice as many calories?

I doubt that there is an additive effect. Maximum exercise, as we measured during our experiments, did not produce any added amounts of irisin as compared to shivering. So I really doubt that exercising and shivering [at the same time] would do anything—aside from making you miserable—that would help you burn [twice as many] calories.

Do other species have this capacity?

Other species are not well studied. But we know that brown fat is present in hibernating mammals.

Going forward, what are the health implications of your findings?

[We have to see] whether it’s possible to use this discovery for weight loss, or to maintain weight loss. But it’s a promising pathway to look at, just from the substantial improvement of metabolism. [That could help with] diabetes [and obesity and a condition called fatty liver]. What we need to understand is whether there is any genetic difference in the response to this pathway.

[One thing we know is that] adaptive thermogenesis—the response to cold exposure—can be activated even by minimal changes in temperature. In our study we demonstrated that just by lowering the thermostat from 74°F (23°C) to 68°F (20°C) is sufficient to generate a measurable increase in energy expenditure.

That’s not [quite the same thing as] shivering. But it’s still measurable—and, potentially, clinically significant.